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Freedom must be
better armed
than tyranny.
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Freedom must be
better armed
than tyranny.
Russia's illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has stimulated a process of rethinking European defence needs. Martens Centre Research Associate Dr Garvan Walshe in Freedom Must Be Better Armed Than Tyranny (2023) went beyond calls to increase defence budgets as a share of GDP, and developed a mathematical model for estimating the changes in European defence equipment budgets that would be required to meet the Russian threat. He has now made this model available to the public so that you can use it to estimate future defence expenditure. Use it to answer questions like:
Choose the countries you want to select. The breakdown of their budgets will appear in the table below. This breaks down the average budget for the last five years of available EDA data by total defence budget expenditure, spending on equipment (also known as defence investment), research and development, and fundamental research, known as 'research and technology'.
The ratios of these quantities, averaged across the countries you have selected are then displayed in the Set Target Ratios panel.
You can change the quantities displayed in the Set Target Ratios panel. You can change the ratios of the components of the defence budget (e.g.: how much of the equipment budget is R&D), and also change the total defence budget as a share of GDP. The effects of these changes for the countries selected are then reflected in the Changes panel below.
For example, to see how much more would need to be spent to increase France's defence budget to 3% and its Equipment share of defence budget to 30%, you should first select France, then put 3% in the defence budget boc and 30% in the equipment/defence budget box. These changes are reflected immeddiately.
| Country | Defence Budget | Equipment | R&D | R&T | |
| Defence Budget | 0 | |
| Equipment | 0 | |
| R&D | 0 | |
| R&T | 0 |